The disability-rights movement has learned much from the black civil-rights movement before it,
but there’s one important area where we falter.

We don’t (yet) claim our differences with pride.

Instead, we apologize. We confess. We clarify with humility.

When I was a child, I received excessive amounts of what was then extremely crude radiation. The
purpose was to save first my eyesight, later my life.

It worked. I’m still here (and grateful) to talk about it. But, down the road, at about age 15
or so, school nurses began sending home reports that I wasn’t passing hearing tests with the
expected flying colors.

My parents scoffed at such reports, and so did I. What did it matter that I wasn’t hearing
super-high frequencies? I could still hear the sound of footsteps on the driveway or conversations
not meant for me long before anyone else in the family.

With hindsight and a broader understanding, I know today that what appeared to be “better”
hearing was actually more-acute hearing, a sense fine-tuned out of need. My ears played a
more-vital role for me because my eyes didn’t work.

By age 25, though, I knew I was missing significant sounds in my environment that others were
hearing plainly.

In my 30s, following a battery of tests and a doctor’s explanation that all of that childhood
radiation was playing havoc with the blood vessels in my hearing department, I got my first set of
hearing aids.

No one knew. The hearing aids were small. My long hair covered them easily.

By my 40s, though, I began sometimes explaining why I needed to sit in the front row, the back
corner, the booth farthest from the loud speakers.

I was comfortable, or so I thought, with my “additional” disability.

Then, yesterday, on a conference call with some 15 people, colleagues and friends, I suddenly
realized I had talked over someone. With a flush of embarrassment, I expounded briefly on my
hearing impairment. I apologized. I “confessed.”

Where is our disability pride? My rational mind tells me that there is no shame in having
less-than-perfect physical or psychological equipment. There should, instead, be pride in moving
forward with whatever abilities we have been given.

But I flash back on a group discussing an upcoming cruise and the woman who tentatively,
apologetically, asked if her wheelchair could be accommodated on one of the excursions.

I hear the echo of a friend “apologizing” on the phone that he can’t hear me with his hearing
aid out.

I think of an email from a fellow writer who sheepishly reveals that her depression prevented
her from attending a meeting.

And I recall the empathy with a friend who nervously divulged to a department-store clerk that
she couldn’t see well enough to locate desired merchandise.

Oscar Pistorius, the South African Olympian and Paralympian runner who is a double amputee, has
said that he does not consider himself disabled.

Clearly, with two below-the-knee amputations, he is disabled, but why does he hesitate to own
it?

And he is by no means alone. Many people with disabilities say they do not consider themselves
disabled; they feel flattered when others are surprised that they have difficulty seeing, hearing,
walking, coping.

The reason is clear enough. To “admit” disability is to invite stigma, risk being discounted,
accept a one-down ranking in the overall social fabric of getting a job, an education, a date.

Compare this mindset with racial differences and the missing pride link is apparent.

Would we say to our Hispanic friend “Oh, I always forget you are from Puerto Rico”?

Would a black man apologize for his race or say “I don’t consider myself black”?

Of course not.

Having a disability does not equate to second-class citizenship. We need to find the pride piece
of the puzzle, embrace who we are, disabilities and all. Sure, sometimes explanations are necessary
— “it is what it is,” as the vernacular has it — but we can do it without justification or
disgrace.

If we who have disabilities claim disability pride, lose the confession and shame, perhaps
others will catch the spirit.

Deborah Kendrick is a Cincinnati writer and advocate for people with disabilities.